Write About Writing #My500Words #237

This is day 10 of the My 500 Words Challenge - today I have to write about writing. To get me going, Jeffs Goins asks the following three questions:

• What do you love about the craft? 
• What do you hate? 
• What're you struggling with, when it comes to this challenge? 

Epictetus.
Image source: Wikipedia.

The Greek philosopher Epictetus (55 - 135) is reputed to have once said "If you wish to be a writer, write". While I am not a novelist or storyteller I have to say that I do love writing. This post is the 1,617th post since I started this blog on 13th November, 2006. I don't know what the average length of each post is, but I'm guessing over 300 words - that would make almost half a million words written in ten years. That's longer than Gone with the Wind (418,053 words) though shorter than War and Peace (587,287 words). I never thought that I would do this or keep it up for nearly ten years. It is strangely liberating to be able to write whatever I want. This is my own blog and I am not ruled or judged by anyone. I don't care if nobody reads my posts - I just love the freedom to be able to do this.

Oh I do hate it when I get a negative comment. There haven't been many, but when they happen I get embarrassed. It's great to get comments, but I'm always fearful that what I write might attract a negative comment. I also hate the spam that a blog attracts. In my blog settings I have to approve all comments before they are published. Even though it only takes a few seconds to mark them as spam, I hate it that spammers think I'm stupid and will publish their rubbish. I also hate it when I get stuck thinking of something to write or when I leave it more than 2 or 3 days between posts. I hate making typos and grammar errors, especially when I don't discover them at the time of writing. It goes without saying that I also hate the amount of time I have to spend making corrections.

This challenge is a struggle. The hardest so far was to "Tell Someone Else's Story" - it took me a long time to base it on Michael O'Leary or even to think of an idea in the first place. There are a few more tough ones ahead. I have also often struggled with hitting the 500 word mark - some days (like today) it is a lot. I have also struggled with not doing a set time every day. At the beginning I thought I would get up early and write first thing, but it is exactly 22:45 now as I write this. I also wrote a bit of this post during lunch today. This is a discipline that true writers get used to - I guess this is not for me.